The Hanford Site first began in 1943, right outside of what we know today as Richland, in a small Washington farming town. Production of plutonium (changing uranium’s chemical composition by exposing it to extra neutrons) started right away after moving thousands of workers to the area from all over the country to make the atomic bomb which later ended World War 2. After the atomic bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man”, was made, it was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945 and the war was over. The reactors were fired up once again to make a large stockpile of atomic weapons during the Cold War and were later completely shut down except for one in 1987. Shortly after the end of the production, a huge-scale clean-up project began in 1989. A massive amount of waste was created by making a small amount of plutonium. This waste polluted the land, the surrounding ecosystem, and most importantly, the Columbia River. Today, the Department of Energy and Washington State are doing everything they can to restore the environment that was damaged.